Glorious Boy

Description

It's 1942. The Japanese have invaded Burma and are closing in on India. After five years in the remote Andaman Islands, aspiring anthropologist Claire Durant and her husband Shep, a civil surgeon, must evacuate with their beloved but mysteriously mute four-year-old, Ty. They cannot, however, take Naila, the local girl whose ability to communicat

Aimee Liu is the bestselling author of the novels Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face and the memoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, published as a Literary Guild Super Release, and serialized in Good Housekeeping. She's received a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, a Bosque Fiction Prize, and special mention by the Pushcart Prize. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, and many other periodicals and anthologies. A past president of the national literary organization PEN Center USA, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College and is on the faculty of Goddard College's MFA in Creative Writing Program at Port Townsend, WA. She lives in Los Angeles. More at aimeeliu.net

"An absolutely gorgeous historical novel about ambition, culture clash, love, atonement, and one silent boy, set against the backdrop of a tribe in the Andamans struggling with British rule. So blisteringly alive, you feel the swampy heat and the bugs; so emotionally true, it grips at every page. Just magnificent and not to be missed." -Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World "In Glorious Boy, Aimee Liu tears a forgotten footnote from the history books and brings it to life in an epic tale of a family caught in a clash of cultures and loyalties during World War II. Set in a penal colony on the remote Andaman Islands, Glorious Boy is the whirlwind story of vanishing cultures, unbreakable codes, rebellion, occupation, and colonization, all swirling around the disappearance of a mute four-year-old boy on the eve of the Japanese occupation of Port Blair. A stirring indictment of the brutality that humanity is capable of, Liu's heartbreaking new novel of love, betrayal, and sacrifice is also a testament to how far we will go for the ones we love." -Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of Shadow Child and Hiroshima in the Morning "No doubt Aimee Liu's ambitious novel, Glorious Boy, will be praised, deservedly, as historical fiction, an adventure novel, even a ripping yarn, but the heart of this book is what it means to be a mother. Liu's sympathetic and complicated protagonist, Claire Durant, finds herself challenged when it comes to connecting with her atypical son, and the book asks us all to consider whose responsibility it is to be better with and to other human beings, especially those with whom we're most intimate. How do we learn what isn't instinct? How do we protect ourselves and others from our own best intentions? With a generous and exacting eye, Liu explores these questions and more, and we, lucky readers, get to go along for the ride." -Karen Shepard, author of Kiss Me Someone "The most memorable and original novel I've read in ages. Aimee Liu takes us into a set of islands-an entire world-most of us have barely heard of, and evokes every side in a multi-cultural conversation with sympathy and rare understanding. Here is the rare book, full of heart yet rich with research, that opens a door to a revealing piece of history that few of us knew existed."-Pico Iyer "A novel about family, communication, and colonialism in a rarely discussed sphere of World War II conflict." -Kirkus Reviews "A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."-Starred Booklist review "Reminiscent of the tone and atmosphere of Somerset Maugham and George Orwell's Asia-set novels, Glorious Boy is a Second World War story of adventure and loss, uniquely set in the Andaman Islands, one of India's farthest flung territories....Glorious Boy stands out from the crowded shelves of World War II literature by immersing the reader in one of the remoter theatres of the Asian half of the War."-Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books "...the thrilling story of one unstoppable mother on a quest to be reunited with her family."-Madeline Diamond, Travel+Leisure "20 New Books to Gift This Mother's Day" "As WWII intensifies, anthropologist Claire Durant waits with her family for the all-clear to leave the lush and sacred Andaman Islands, in this fascinating novel about the many, often unexpected dimensions of war." -Booklist, "Top 10 Historical Fiction of 2020" "Glorious Boy transcends history and geography and gets to the heart of things." -Elizabeth Sulis Kim, The Los Angeles Review of Books "This lyrical narrative takes the reader on a sweeping emotional and physical journey, exploring themes of endurance, love, sacrifice, motherhood, guilt, and hope." -Susan McDuffie, Historical Novel Society "Glorious Boy is an exciting read, a family story that morphs into a high-stakes adventure." -The Washington Independent Review of Books "Liu's well-crafted plotline shows how courageous action brings hope. In lushly described scenes, Glorious Boy engages the reader while not providing the characters any easy paths to resolution." - Consequence Magazine "This novel tugged at my heart in all the right ways. I got teary explaining to my husband why I'd cried the night before, when I'd stayed up until two in the morning finishing the book. As her characters' journey becomes increasingly fraught, Liu walks the emotional tightrope perfectly, never swaying into sentimentality but also never shying away from heartbreak." -Norah Vawter, Washington Independent Review of Books